From the Audubon
webpage: "The Christmas Bird Count (CBC) is a
long-standing program of the National Audubon Society, with
over 100 years of citizen science involvement. It is an
early-winter bird census, where thousands of volunteers across
the US, Canada and many countries in the Western Hemisphere,
go out over a 24 hour period on one calendar day to count
birds". The webpage explains how a CBC works, how to join, and
how to see a map view of all known CBC circles (all are 15
miles in diameter). In general, if you wish to participate in
one or more counts, contact the compiler for a particular CBC
Circle who will help you select a route within the circle. On
the day of the count for that circle, all participants for
each route walk and/or drive the route once sometime during
the day and count all birds seen or heard. The species and
individual counts are then sent to the compiler who collates
all the route reports and enters it on the Audubon site.
The current Christmas Bird Count (CBC) data for State College (or any other region and circle in the western hemisphere) is available on the Audubon webpage by clicking on "Current Year", selecting a region, and then selecting a circle. If you do that for the region Pennsylvania and the circle State College, you will see the results from the most recent State College CBC.
Similarly, you can view the data for any year for any region and circle by going to Audubon web page and clicking on Historical Results and following the instructions. For State College, you can choose a single year or a range of years from 1940 to the present. The result is a web page with a table of data for the range you specified.
The species seen during a State College CBC are about the same from year to year. The State College Christmas Bird Count for 1998 is just one representative year, and is included here because the list is more immediately available than by going to the Audubon site.
All of the State College CBC data from 1940
to the present may be downloaded or displayed from our web
site as a single file (see List below). The downloaded data is
a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. To view the data, you will need
Excel or software that can interpret data in Excel format. The
data here should be identical to the data on the Audubon web
site. Similarly, the Huntingdon
CBC data from 1984 to 2015 may be downloaded from the
list below.
The static maps of the State College CBC circle (350KB) and
Bald Eagle State Park (680KB)
CBC circle show the approximate boundaries of the count
circles. Note that some browers (e.g., Firefox) display a
smaller image which you can expand by clicking on the image.
The State College circle PASC is centered at the coordinates (40.8, -77.8) which are recorded at Audubon. To see the PASC circle in Google Earth (you must have Google Earth on your computer), OPTION-click (MAC) this link to download a 5KB kml file to your DOWNLOADS folder (or CTRL-click on a Windows keyboard), and in Google Earth click FILE/OPEN on the menu bar and OPEN the downloaded file CBCPASC.kml. Then, for example, you can use the Google tool RULER to find the distance between any two points or the length of a path or road within the circle. Google Earth is a free computer program (uncheck the box at the top or the Google Chrome browser will be bundled in the download).
Alternatively, to view any detailed CBC map in North America, visit the Audubon webpage christmasbirdcount.org, scroll down and click on “Join the Christmas Bird Count“, and finally click on the link with “map view”. You should see a map of North America with yellow circles for registered CBCs. At the top left, click + or – to zoom in or out. To go directly to a circle, click on one of the yellow circles, or enter the name of a CBC like State College, PA, Huntingdon, PA, Spring Mills, PA, Cape May, NJ, etc., in the search box. Then zoom out until you see a yellow circle which you can click on to get details about the CBC including, Compiler, coordinates of the center, and Count date.Similarly,the Bald Eagle circle PABE is centered at
41.016700, -77.666700, and to see the circle in Google Earth,
download
the
file CBCPABE.kml as above and follow that procedure or
use the Audubon Map View as above.
The Christmas Bird Count Report Form (see List below) for both State College and Bald Eagle State Park is available for downloading as a Microsoft Word document with two pages. With a printer with duplexing, it should print a single page front and back. On a typical non-duplexing home printer, you can print page 1, then flip the page over and print page 2.
Rare or extremely infrequent species require a few extra supporting details by filling out a Rare Bird Report (see List below) and mailing to a local compiler. The compilers are listed on the Christmas Bird Count Report Form mentioned above.
List of downloadable/displayable items
| State College CBC data since 1940 | 500KB | HTML | click to view |
|---|---|---|---|
| State College CBC data since 1940 | 102KB | Excel spreadsheet | click to download |
| CBC report form | 40KB | MS Word | click to download |
| CBC Vehicle Survey Sign | 80KB | MS Word | click to download |
| Rare bird form | 40KB | MS Word |
click to download |
| State College Circle | 350KB | JPG | click to view |
| Bald Eagle SP Circle | 680KB | JPG | click to view |
| BESP Routes | 596KB | click to download | |
| Huntingdon CBC data 1984-2015 | 64KB | Excel spreadsheet | click to download |
